The Painter's Art [pp. 313-324]

THE PAIN TER'S A R T.
4' To return to the living figure; to discern that in order to imi.
tate the human form, it is necessary to contemplate the human
form, what could be simpler?" Yet in this lay the gist of the
Renaissance. This fact, simple as it is, furnishes a key to that
great revival in art and letters which, beginning with Cimabue
and Dante, flowed onward with ever-increasing beauty and
power until it arrived at its flood in the sixteenth century.
Giotto, the contemporary and friend of Dante, followed
Cimabue, whose pupil he was. Lanzi, the author of the best
history of painting extant, writes:" If Cimabue was the Michael
Angelo of that age, Giotto was the Raphael, as painting, in his
hands, became so elegant that none of his school, nor of any other,
until the time of Massaccio-a century later-surpassed or even
equalled him, at least in gracefulness of manner." The formal
attitudes, the long and meagre hands, the pointed feet and
staring eyes-remnants of the Byzantine manner-all "acquired
more correctness under him:" and this advance is attributed
to his study of the antique, and to his frequent reference to the
living model-for with Giotto portrait-painting began. He
painted in his frescos, in the chapel of the Podesta, at Florence, the portraits of his friends, conspicuously Dante; also Latini
and Donati. Thus this advance in the art may be attributed to
the study of the newly discovered sculptures of the ancients, and
of the living model. Nothing was wanting to the painters of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries than to learn that they had
pursued a wrong path. This was sufficient to guide them into
a better, and it was not then untried for sculpture had already,
as we have seen, improved design.
Giotto carried the art to that degree of perfection which
rendered painting an effective and elegant means of expressing
ideas. He freed the art from those conventionalities that confined it to its previously narrow sphere of expression. Not
only had Giotto ornamented the beautiful Campanile, adjoining
the Duomo, at Florence, with sculptures and reliefs, designed
by himself, tho executed by various sculptors, and representing
the various arts and sciences, the cardinal virtues, and subjects
illustrative of the temporal and spiritual life of man, but his
enormously prolific genius covered the walls of many churches
and other public buildings with frescos crowded with figures,
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